‘Fleishman’: Good and bad at once
When you get divorced, what does it mean? Sure, you’re no longer married, but what does it mean for your life? Your career? Your kids? Your happiness? What does it mean for the universe?
Those are the questions FX and Hulu’s new limited series “Fleishman Is in Trouble” tries to answer. Based on the acclaimed novel by journalist Taffy Brodesser-Akner (who adapted her own work), “Fleishman” (streaming Thursdays on Hulu, ★★1⁄2 out of four) is a postmortem on one particular marriage, of Toby (Jesse Eisenberg) and Rachel (Claire Danes), and the aftershocks of the split felt by their children, friends and community.
Marriage is not simple or easy, and neither is watching “Fleishman,” a contradictory series that’s addictively watchable in one moment and difficult to get through in another. At points the dialogue is too pretentious, at others it is riveting. The acting is Emmy-worthy, but the characters are often tiresome.
“Fleishman” is very New York, very upper-middle class and very Jewish, and its specificity can be a strength. But when the scripts try to espouse big ideas about life, the universe and everything, it falters. I loved it, I hated it, but mostly I couldn’t stop thinking about it, which perhaps means I liked it more than I am willing to admit.
Dr. Toby Fleishman (Eisenberg), a liberated divorcé and king of dating apps, wakes up one morning to discover that his ex-wife Rachel (Danes) has quietly dropped off their two children (Meara Mahoney Gross and Maxim Swinton), and does not appear to be coming back.
From here, the series jumps around in time: In the present, Toby scrambles to care for his kids and find out what happened to Rachel. In the past, he’s recounting episodes from their marriage and since: the moments they fell in love as college kids, and scenes of their crumbling marriage as they grew and changed.
The narrative appears clear at first: Theater-agent Rachel’s ambition and drive for career success and 1%-level wealth clashed with Toby’s family values. But a late-season episode told “Rashomon”-style from Rachel’s point of view suggests that Toby’s vilification of his wife and valorization of himself isn’t as valid as he believes.
Toby confides his anger and frustration at his ex-wife to his college friends Libby (Lizzy Caplan) and Seth (Adam Brody), who are both facing their own states of middle-age malaise. Libby has recently left an unhappy career as a magazine writer to be an even unhappier stay-at-home mom. Seth’s rejection of monogamy and the path to marriage and kids has left him a sad man-child.
The series has a stellar cast, and it’s easy to see what attracted them to their roles. These are the kind of scripts actors love: meaty and talky, full of big monologues and emotional highs and lows (with little space in between). Danes, who never does anything at less than a 10/10, gets to flex her rage and crying muscles once again (although at times her performance hews a little too closely to her “Homeland” spy character, Carrie Mathison). Eisenberg is angry and speaks at his typical mile-aminute pace. Playing a harried but devoted father is a new look for the actor, who is frequently typecast as an unlikeable nebbish. The real star is Caplan, all snark, sneers and sadness, the unlikely narrator of all eight episodes. When she, Eisenberg and Brody clash, it’s impossible to look away.
There is a literary flourish to the series that is variously welcome or distracting. Metaphor and analogy are everywhere and often revealing, but so are twisty little turns of phrase that are a little too perfect to be the language of a doctor, a theater agent or an 11-year-old girl. Toby’s medical specialty is the liver, seemingly because the organ’s regenerative properties offer an easy symbol for his desire for rebirth. Caplan’s narration is heavy-handed and initially off-putting, distracting from the action on screen and committing the cardinal writing sin of telling instead of showing.
“Fleishman” is the latest in a far-toolong line of TV shows, films and books about rich white people. But the series lacks the bite of satires like HBO’s “The White Lotus,” or the flair of a silly melodrama like “Succession.” Instead, Toby is the poor little rich boy, but he has the luxury of ennui about middle age only because of his wealth and whiteness. The series is seemingly embarrassed by this – its sympathetic white male characters spout half-hearted platitudes about privilege and inequity without dwelling on their greater implications. When the scripts attempt to make Toby, Rachel and Libby’s problems universal – done at points with use of the confusing “block theory” of space-time – it doesn’t resonate. It’s clear that their woes are very much rich people problems.
The series suggests that many things can be true all at once, and indeed that’s what it’s like to watch “Fleishman.” It’s good, but it’s bad. It’s addictive and tedious. It’s light-hearted, and then it’s somber.
It is, in the end, very much like a marriage.